• Question: Do you think a computer could rule the world and would it be a good idea?

    Asked by to Willem on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Willem Heijltjes

      Willem Heijltjes answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Hi Chromadude,

      Excellent question! I hope that will never happen, because I can easily think how this could go wrong:

      How will the computer make people listen? The computer will have to control the police, and the army… But if the army is made of people, that would be dangerous for the computer – the army may decide to unplug it. So the computer will want to make the army out of robots that it controls… That sounds very dangerous to me!

      There’s a fun comic about this: (the computer is “utilitarian”, which means it computes the maximum “happiness” for everyone)

      http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2569

Comments

  • chromadude commented on :

    I read the comic, it was very interesting. What if the computer wasn’t given power to control the army and police, but just got to make any big decisions that might be too hard for humans? Also it could be part of the internet (have it’s code on many servers so when one gets destroyed/unplugged it wouldn’t be affected). Finally, the problem with computers or robots in films where they try to take over the world is that they would have to be programmed to be able to learn, maybe this computer wouldn’t be like that?